The Everglades' Ecosystem

The Everglades' Ecosystem

The Everglades is a large marshland containing different ecosystems that mesh together.

The area has been turned into a wildlife preserve to help maintain those ecosystems. The

Everglades is changing drastically because of human interference, and the wildlife has to adapt to rapid changes in their environment, which has caused it to become a National Park to prevent such changes as well as stop the introduction of exotic plant-life and animals into the Everglades.

Anne Ake's research explains that the Everglades has changed dramatically since the human settlers arrived. For years, fires were common and healthy for the environment. But when the settlers cleared out land with massive fires, the environment took a little longer to recuperate. But as the population grew, such large fires were seen as a danger to society and were prevented from ever happening. This meant that now there would be no fire to help new plant life grow. Then the settlers grew crops, and to solve the issues of droughts and floods, they redirected the river to suit their crops' needs. This meant the once meandering rivers and streams no longer got to filter the fertilizers from the farmers' crops, and were dumped directly into the Everglades. The fertilizers caused algae to grow, and when the algae withered and sunk to the bottom, it caused the oxygen levels to drop. This killed fish and created less of a food source for the animals that ate fish as their primary food source (13-14).

The second point of research is about the landscape of the Everglades and how it affects the ecosystem. The land's incline prevents some areas to receive and maintain a water level enough to support lush plant life. The water that sli...

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...y have, but since the wildlife's population has dropped, it makes it easier for the ecosystem to maintain a balance that the wildlife can survive in (Threats to the Ecosystem).

In conclusion, the Everglades' ecosystem, once a thriving expanse of marshland that spanned millions of acres, is now a mere 1,800 mile National Park, dedicated to preventing the species living in it, be they plant or animal, from going extinct. The ecosystem is constantly fluctuating due to canals that have been dug to redirect water, which prevents the natural filtering the winding canals would give, for the fertilizers farmers use to grow crops. Which has caused algae to grow in the Everglades. Humans have also prevented natural fires from occurring and have introduced unnatural things that don't belong, such as exotic animals and plants, that choke out the existing wildlife.